Current telecommunication and information technology systems are designed based on Shannons operational definitions of coding-capacity, the maximum rate of communicating information over noisy channels, and coding-compression, the minimum rate of compressing information, which give the fundamental performance limitations for reliable communication. They utilize encoders and decoders, to combat communication noise and to remove redundancy in data.
Current dynamical control systems are designed by utilizing feedback controllers, actuators and sensors, to ensure stability, robustness, and optimal control objectives and performance.
Industries related to modern control and communication systems have experienced tremendous growth due to their increasing applications in information technology which affects everyday lives of people. The next generation of engineering systems integrates control, communication, protocols, etc. to develop complex engineering systems, which can be implemented in energy systems, transportation systems, medical systems, surveillance networks, financial instruments etc. Many of these applications consist of multiple control sub-systems and communication sub-systems integrated together to achieve control and communication objectives.
In the field of communication most systems are designed by utilizing encoders and decoders, to combat communication noise and to remove redundancy in data. Current telecommunication systems, whether point-to-point, network, mobile, etc., are designed, based on Shannon's operational definitions, which give the maximum rate of communicating information over noisy channels, and the minimum rate of compressing data generated by sources, called coding-capacity of communication channels, and coding-compression of information processes, respectively.
In the field of modern control theory and applications, controllers are designed to control the control system outputs, to optimize performance and to achieve robustness with respect to uncertainties and noise. Over the year the criterion of optimality of controllers is the average of a real-valued sample path pay-off functional, of the control, state and output processes, which is optimized to achieve optimal control performance. It is well-known that controllers are designed to control the control systems but not to encode information and communicate this information, through the control system to other processes.
The general separation of control system design and communication system design has divided the community of developers into independent groups developing controllers for control systems, and communication systems for noisy channels. Shannon's operational definitions of achievable coding-capacity, and coding-compression, which utilizes encoders and decoders, to combat communication noise and to remove redundancy in data, did not apply beyond communication system, such as, in the ability of control system to transmit information.
To this date, no controllers in a control system is designed to communicate information, from one controller, through the control system, to another controller, or to any of its outputs, or from elements of a control system to elements of another control system, using encoders and decoders as done in problems of information transmission over noisy channels.
To this date, Shannon's operational definitions of coding-capacity and coding-compression are not used beyond communication system, such as, in dynamical control system. It is well-known that encoders are designed to encode and transmit information over noisy communication channels but not to control channel output processes.